Questions raised on Congo slaughter

FILE - In this May 19, 1997 file photo, a Hutu refugee with his hands bound begs for his life while being jabbed with a machete and punched by two Alliance soldiers, who the photographer identified as Rwandan Tutsis, 47 kilometers south of Kisangani, Congo, then Zaire. According to the photographer, the soldiers killed him seconds later. The discovery of mass graves prompted investigations that led to a controversial U.N. report published on Oct. 1, 2010 which accuses invading Rwandan troops of killing tens of thousands of Hutus 1996 and 1997. (AP Photo, FIle)

AP Enterprise: Questions raised on Congo slaughter


By MICHELLE FAUL (AP) – 5 hours ago
MUSEKERA, Congo — The mass graves are hidden in the darkening shade of a hard-to-reach banana plantation, high up a mountain above the cloud line, at the end of a treacherous dirt track slippery with mud and animal dung.
Those who survived say they did not go to the meeting called by Rwandan soldiers.
The Congolese Hutu peasants who did were brought out of the thatched-roof meeting house two by two, to be bludgeoned to death with their own hoes, picks and axes. Some 300 villagers died that morning of Oct. 20, 1996, according to the local Observation Center for Human Rights and Social Assistance.
The story of the 1994 genocide of more than a half million Tutsis slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda has been told in the world's press, in books and in movies such as "Hotel Rwanda." But the subsequent slaughter of Hutus in neighboring Congo is little known, and its perpetrators never have been brought to justice. The discovery of mass graves prompted investigations that led to a controversial U.N. report published on Oct. 1, which accuses invading Rwandan troops of killing tens of thousands of Hutus in 1996 and 1997.
"There are many, many such mass graves. We've identified 30 just in this Rutshuru district, but our research indicates that this was the first massacre committed by Rwandan troops," the center's coordinator, Herve Nsabimana, said beside the banana trees.
Many victims told their wives to take the youngest children and hide in the fields. Today, Musekera is a village of widows. The only man over 50 was at a nearby health center during the massacre.
Matata Ihigihugo has relatives in three mass graves: her husband and two sons in the one reserved for males, a sister in the women's grave, and her 8-year-old daughter in the one where children's small bodies were buried.
"They killed all my people. I have no life left," said Ihigihugo, who thinks she is 40 but looks many years older.
She objected to being asked to name her massacred family. "Why do you ask me to call out the names of those who are dead?" she demanded. "There can be no peace for me until they are properly buried."
It was the Rwandan Tutsi soldiers, led by now-president Paul Kagame, who as rebels ended Rwanda's 1994 genocide. But they now are accused of vengeful massacres of Hutus when they took the war into Congo.



Roberto Garreton, a Chilean lawyer who for eight years was the U.N. special rapporteur in Congo, told The Associated Press that his first report detailing massacres by Kagame's troops involved Hutus killed in Rwanda in 1994. He said the United Nations suppressed that report, apparently because of embarrassment and guilt that it did nothing to stop the genocide. The United Nations initially denied the existence of the report, which later was leaked.



After the Tutsi rebels triumphed and took over Rwanda's government, Kagame became vice president and defense minister. He sent troops into Congo in 1996 - although he denied it at the time - in an invasion that led to the ouster of Congo's longtime dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.



U.N. reports in 1997 and 1998, including one by Garreton, blamed a coalition of Congolese rebel forces that Kagame later admitted were commanded by Rwandan officers for massacres of Hutus, and said they were on a scale to suggest a possible genocide. Then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan responded by asking Congo and Rwanda to investigate the allegations - basically to investigate themselves.
The evidence later became too big to sweep under the carpet. In 2005, U.N. peacekeepers uncovered mass graves in east Congo of hundreds of civilians believed to have been executed by Rwandan soldiers. The discovery prompted renewed investigations that culminated in the latest U.N. report, which said the killings in Congo were so systematic that a court could consider it genocide.
The report recommends that those responsible be punished but doesn't name names. Congo has said it is willing to establish a transnational court to punish those responsible. After months of denials that Rwandan troops were in Congo, Kagame took ownership of the invasion, admitting he had planned and ordered it. Among officers commanding the coalition forces was Joseph Kabila, now president of Congo.



Last month, 40 Congolese police officers and a few army military investigators completed a course in forensic science that trained them to find evidence in mass graves. It was paid for by the U.S. State Department and organized by the American Bar Association. The training was led by Peruvian forensic anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybari, who has investigated massacres in Bosnia.



The trainees worked on dummies set up on mock graves, Elysee Sindayigaya said from the bar association's office in Goma, eastern Congo. "We're making representations to the government of Congo to try to get access to real mass graves, but it's very sensitive."



Kagame, whose reputation is pegged to the moral high ground of having stopped Rwanda's Hutu-led genocide while U.N. peacekeepers and the international community did nothing, tried to get the latest report quashed by threatening to withdraw Rwandan troops from U.N. peacekeeping operations in several countries, including the commander of the forces in Darfur, Sudan. The report was published with some language moderated, but the reference to possible genocide remained. Its publication was delayed to include lengthy rebuttals from Rwanda and Congo.



Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo calls the report "an attempt to rewrite history" and "flawed and dangerous."



Kagame has succeeded in the past in stifling similar accusations.



"The question now is the same question there was then: Is there the political will to identify the killers and bring them to justice?" asked Reed Brody, a former deputy U.N. investigator who helped write the 1998 report.



Human rights activists say Kagame's allies in the U.S. and British governments, which pour aid into Rwanda and have used it as a platform to dilute French influence in the region, don't want him investigated. Many fear digging further could destabilize the already volatile Central African region.



Kagame was trained at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1990. Once he came into power, the U.S. Special Forces trained Rwandan troops before, during and after the invasion of Congo - even as U.N. and other investigators reported their alarm at alleged atrocities by the government soldiers.



Kagame has said his invasion of Congo was aimed at dismantling massive refugee camps that sheltered both Rwandan Hutu refugees and perpetrators of the genocide. At the time, reporters documented how the camps were being militarized by genocide perpetrators who used them as launch pads for cross-border raids into Rwanda.



Many times, Kagame urged the United Nations to separate the armed men from the refugees and dismantle the camps. Kagame has said that in 1996 he warned the United States and the United Nations that if they would not do it, he would.



A 1997 Human Rights Watch report that sought to identify commanders of the massacres said James Kabarebe, who became Rwanda's defense minister in April, was the most senior Rwandan officer in Congo during the invasion. Messages left at Rwanda's Ministry of Defense got no response to requests for a comment.



Kagame has said most of those who died were genocide perpetrators. But the new U.N. report says Rwandan troops routinely invited refugees or villagers to meetings and then slaughtered them.



"The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the apparently systematic nature of the massacres of survivors after the camps had been taken suggests that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage," the report says, adding that most victims were "children, women, elderly people and the sick."



Like the report, Brody noted that the impunity established then has helped fuel violence in Congo that persists to this day.



"The fact that these killings of tens of thousands, if not more, went utterly unpunished, the fact that there was clearly not the political will to identify the authors of these massacres and to bring them to justice, has facilitated the cycle of violence," he said.



Brody said his own investigation in 1997 and 1998 was obstructed by Congo's government and by the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.

"We were asking the U.S. for information, for satellite photos we knew existed of the refugee camps. We never got a thing," he said. Requests for interviews about the role the United States military and its diplomats played during Rwanda's invasion of Congo all were referred to the U.S. State Department, which did not respond to questions. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1997, refused a request for an interview.
Brody said that while Washington probably felt tremendous guilt for not doing anything to stop the 1994 genocide and was glad that Rwanda helped rid Congo of Mobutu, "at the same time there were these thousands of cold-blooded unforgivable murders of, for the most part, unarmed people."
Uncovering the graves, proving how people were killed and even perhaps identifying them could bring closure for people like Ihigihugo, one of the widows of Musekera.



"There can be no rest for people buried like that," she said of the mass graves. "Giving a proper burial to my family also would put my heart at rest."

Les questions soulevées sur le Congo d'abattage

DOSSIER - En ce 19 mai 1997 photo d'archives, un réfugié hutu les mains liées supplie pour sa vie tout en étant piquée avec une machette et frappé par des soldats Alliance deux, qui était le photographe identifiés comme Tutsis rwandais, 47 km au sud de Kisangani, au Congo , alors le Zaïre. Selon le photographe, les soldats l'ont tué quelques secondes plus tard. La découverte de charniers suscité des recherches qui ont abouti à un rapport controversé de l'ONU publié le 1 octobre 2010 qui accuse les troupes d'invasion rwandaises d'avoir tué des dizaines de milliers de Hutus en 1996 et 1997. (Photo AP, Dossier)

Enterprise AP: Les questions soulevées sur le Congo d'abattage


Par Michelle FAUL (AP) - Il ya 5 heures

MUSEKERA, Congo - Les charniers sont cachés à l'ombre d'un assombrissement difficiles à atteindre des plantations de bananes, en haut d'une montagne au-dessus de la ligne de nuages, à la fin d'un chemin de terre glissante dangereuse avec de la bouse de boue et des animaux.

Ceux qui ont survécu disent qu'ils ne vont pas à la réunion convoquée par des militaires rwandais.
Les paysans Hutu congolais qui n'ont été mis hors de la maison au toit de chaume réunion deux par deux, d'être battue à mort avec leurs propres houes, pioches et de haches. Quelque 300 villageois sont morts ce matin du 20 octobre 1996, selon le Centre local d'observation des droits de l'homme et l'aide sociale.
L'histoire du génocide de 1994 de plus d'un demi-million de Tutsis massacrés par les Hutus au Rwanda a été dit dans la presse mondiale, dans les livres et dans des films comme "Hôtel Rwanda". Mais l'abattage ultérieur des Hutus au Congo voisin est peu connue, et ses auteurs n'ont jamais été traduits en justice. La découverte de charniers suscité des recherches qui ont abouti à un rapport controversé de l'ONU publié le 1 octobre, qui accuse les troupes d'invasion rwandaises d'avoir tué des dizaines de milliers de Hutus en 1996 et 1997.

"Il ya beaucoup, beaucoup de tels charniers. Nous avons identifié 30 seulement dans ce district de Rutshuru, mais notre recherche indique que ce fut le premier massacre commis par les troupes rwandaises,« coordinateur du centre, Hervé Nsabimana, a déclaré à côté de la bananiers.
Beaucoup de victimes ont dit à leurs épouses de prendre les plus jeunes enfants et se cachent dans les champs. Aujourd'hui, Musekera est un village de veuves. Le seul homme de plus de 50 a été dans un centre de santé de proximité pendant le massacre.
Matata Ihigihugo a des parents dans trois charniers: son mari et ses deux fils dans l'une réservée aux hommes, une sœur dans la tombe de la femme et sa fille de 8 ans dans celui où le corps des enfants petits ont été enterrés.
"Ils ont tué tous mes gens. Je n'ai pas de vie à gauche", a déclaré Ihigihugo, qui pense qu'elle est de 40, mais semble depuis de nombreuses années et plus.
Elle s'est opposée à leur demande de nom de sa famille massacrés. «Pourquoi me demandez-vous d'appeler les noms de ceux qui sont morts?" elle a exigé. "Il ne peut y avoir de paix pour moi jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient bien enterrés."
Il a été les soldats Tutsi rwandais, dirigé par maintenant-président Paul Kagame, qui en tant que rebelles terminé Rwanda du génocide de 1994. Mais ils sont maintenant accusés de massacres de Hutus vengeance quand ils ont pris la guerre au Congo.
Roberto Garreton, un avocat chilien qui depuis huit ans a été le rapporteur spécial des NU au Congo, a déclaré à l'Associated Press que son premier rapport détaillant les massacres par les troupes de Kagamé impliqués Hutus tués au Rwanda en 1994. Il a dit que l'Organisation des Nations Unies supprimé ce rapport, apparemment en raison de l'embarras et la culpabilité qu'il n'a rien fait pour arrêter le génocide. L'Organisation des Nations Unies d'abord nié l'existence du rapport, qui plus tard a été divulgué.
Après les rebelles tutsis triomphé et pris le pouvoir au Rwanda, Paul Kagame est devenu vice-président et ministre de la Défense. Il a envoyé des troupes au Congo en 1996 - bien qu'il l'ait nié à l'époque - dans une invasion qui a conduit à l'éviction du dictateur de longue date du Congo, Mobutu Sese Seko.
rapports de l'ONU en 1997 et 1998, dont un par Garreton, a accusé une coalition de forces rebelles congolaises que Kagame a admis plus tard ont été commandés par des officiers rwandais pour des massacres de Hutus, et ont dit qu'ils étaient sur une échelle de suggérer un éventuel génocide. Puis-U.N. Secrétaire général Kofi Annan a répondu en demandant Congo et le Rwanda pour enquêter sur les allégations - essentiellement à enquêter eux-mêmes.
Les éléments de preuve plus tard est devenu trop grand pour balayer sous le tapis. En 2005, les Casques bleus de l'ONU à découvert des fosses communes dans l'est du Congo de centaines de civils auraient été exécutés par des soldats rwandais. La découverte a suscité un regain d'enquêtes qui ont abouti dans le dernier rapport de l'ONU, qui a déclaré les massacres au Congo ont été aussi systématique que le tribunal pourrait considérer comme un génocide.
Le rapport recommande que les responsables soient punis, mais ne pas citer des noms. Congo a déclaré qu'il est disposé à établir un tribunal transnationale pour punir les responsables. Après des mois de refus que les troupes rwandaises au Congo ont été, Kagame a pris le contrôle de l'invasion, en admettant qu'il avait planifié et ordonné. Parmi les officiers commandant les forces de la coalition a été Joseph Kabila, actuel président du Congo.
Le mois dernier, 40 agents de la police congolaise et les enquêteurs d'une armée peu de militaires complété un cours de science médico-légale qui a formé à trouver des preuves dans des fosses communes. Il a été payé par le Département d'Etat américain et organisé par l'American Bar Association. La formation était dirigée par péruvienne anthropologue légiste Jose Pablo Baraybari, qui a enquêté sur les massacres en Bosnie.
Les stagiaires ont travaillé sur des mannequins mis en place sur les tombes maquette, Elysée Sindayigaya a déclaré le bureau du barreau à Goma, dans l'est du Congo. "Nous faisons des représentations auprès du gouvernement du Congo pour tenter d'obtenir l'accès aux charniers réel, mais il est très sensible."
Kagame, dont la réputation est indexé sur le terrain moral d'avoir arrêté le génocide dirigé par les Hutus au Rwanda alors que des Casques bleus des Nations Unies et la communauté internationale n'a rien fait, tenté d'obtenir le dernier rapport annulée en menaçant de retirer les troupes rwandaises des opérations de maintien de la paix des Nations Unies dans plusieurs pays, y compris le commandant des forces au Darfour, au Soudan. Le rapport a été publié avec un langage modéré, mais la référence au génocide est resté possible. Sa publication a été retardée afin d'inclure de longues réfutations du Rwanda et du Congo.
Rwanda ministre des Affaires étrangères Louise Mushikiwabo appelle le rapport «une tentative de réécrire l'histoire" et "erronée et dangereuse."
Kagame a réussi dans le passé à étouffer des accusations similaires.
"La question est maintenant la même question il y avait alors: Y at-il la volonté politique afin d'identifier les assassins et les traduire en justice?" demandé Reed Brody, un ancien sous-enquêteur de l'ONU qui a aidé à rédiger le rapport de 1998.
militants des droits humains disent alliés de Kagame dans les gouvernements américain et britannique, qui versent l'aide au Rwanda et l'ont utilisé comme une plate-forme de diluer l'influence française dans la région, ne veulent pas enquêté sur lui. Beaucoup craignent en outre creuser pourrait déstabiliser la région déjà instable centrale africaine.
Kagame a été formé à l'US Army Command and Staff College à Fort Leavenworth, au Kansas, en 1990. Une fois qu'il est arrivé au pouvoir, les Forces spéciales américaines formés troupes rwandaises avant, pendant et après l'invasion du Congo - alors même que l'ONU et d'autres enquêteurs ont déclaré que leur alarme à des atrocités alléguées par les soldats du gouvernement.
Kagame a déclaré que son invasion du Congo visait à démanteler les immenses camps de réfugiés qui abritait les réfugiés hutus rwandais et les auteurs du génocide. À l'époque, les journalistes documenté comment les camps ont été militarisées par les auteurs du génocide qui les a utilisées comme tapis de lancer des raids transfrontaliers au Rwanda.
Plusieurs fois, Kagame a exhorté l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour séparer les hommes armés de réfugiés et de démanteler les camps. Kagame a déclaré que, en 1996, il a averti les Etats-Unis et l'Organisation des Nations Unies que, s'ils ne le ferais pas, il le ferait.
A 1997 de Human Rights Watch qui a cherché à identifier les commandants des massacres, a déclaré James Kabarebe, qui devint ministre de la Défense du Rwanda en avril, a été le plus haut dirigeant rwandais au Congo lors de l'invasion. Les messages laissés au Rwanda, Ministère de la Défense n'a obtenu aucune réponse aux demandes d'un commentaire.
Kagame a déclaré que la plupart de ceux qui sont morts ont été les auteurs du génocide. Mais le nouveau rapport des Nations Unies dit que les troupes rwandaises régulièrement invité des réfugiés ou des villageois à des réunions et les abattaient.
"L'utilisation intensive des armes blanches (surtout marteaux) et le caractère apparemment systématique des massacres de survivants après les camps avaient été prises suggère que les nombreux décès ne peut être attribuée aux dangers de la guerre ou la considérer comme équivalant à des dommages collatéraux», les dit le rapport, ajoutant que la plupart des victimes sont des "enfants, femmes, personnes âgées et les malades."
Comme le rapport, Brody a noté que l'impunité a créé ensuite aidé alimentent la violence au Congo, qui persiste à ce jour.
"Le fait que ces meurtres de dizaines de milliers, sinon plus, a tout à fait impunie, le fait qu'il n'y avait manifestement pas la volonté politique d'identifier les auteurs de ces massacres et de les traduire en justice, a facilité le cycle de la violence, dit-il.
Brody a sa propre enquête en 1997 et 1998 a été entravée par le gouvernement du Congo et par l'ambassade américaine à Kinshasa, la capitale congolaise.

"Nous avons demandé aux États-Unis pour obtenir des renseignements, des photos satellites que nous connaissait l'existence des camps de réfugiés. Nous n'avons jamais eu une chose, dit-il. Les demandes d'interviews sur le rôle de l'armée des États-Unis et ses diplomates ont joué lors de l'invasion du Rwanda du Congo tous ont été renvoyés au Département d'Etat américain, qui n'a pas répondu aux questions. L'ambassadeur américain aux Nations Unies Susan Rice, qui était secrétaire d'État adjointe aux affaires africaines de 1997, a refusé une demande pour une entrevue.
Brody a dit que tandis que Washington se sentait probablement une énorme culpabilité de ne rien faire pour arrêter le génocide de 1994 et il s'est réjoui que le Rwanda a aidé débarrasser le Congo de Mobutu », dans le même temps, il y avait ces milliers de meurtres de sang-froid impardonnable, pour la plupart , des gens désarmés. "
Découvrir les tombes, ce qui prouve combien de personnes ont été tuées et peut-être même leur identification pourrait mettre un terme à des gens comme Ihigihugo, l'une des veuves de Musekera.

"Il ne peut y avoir de repos pour personnes enterrées comme ça, dit-elle des fosses communes. «Donner une sépulture digne à ma famille serait également mis mon cœur au repos."

UN's Congo report could spur genocide trials

By FRANK JORDANS (AP) – 1 day ago




GENEVA — On Nov. 14, 1996, armed men surrounded the Mugunga refugee camp in eastern Zaire and began shooting indiscriminately at its inhabitants as they huddled for safety or tried to flee.
Hundreds of men, women and children died over a three-day period, according to eyewitnesses and forensic evidence later gathered from mass graves.
A report published Friday by the U.N. human rights office says the killings at Mugunga may have been one of many instances that qualify as crimes against humanity or even — taken together — genocide by the Rwandan army, which at the time was hunting down Hutu rebels in neighboring Zaire, now called Congo.
The genocide suggestion sparked an angry response from Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame has basked in international approval for ending the 1994 genocide there, during which more than half a million people, mostly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were killed.
Calling the report "flawed and dangerous from start to finish," Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said it was an attempt to rewrite history.
In a written riposte to the United Nations, the Rwandan government said its troops "never fired any weapons into the camp" at Mugunga and civilians only were killed when armed rebels inside the camp tried to stop people from fleeing. Later, civilians who were held as human shields by the rebels died in the crossfire, it said.
The Red Cross and other organizations cited in the report refused to comment on it, saying the subject was too sensitive in light of ongoing human rights abuses in the region. The U.N. says more than 500 rapes have been committed in eastern Congo since late July.
Previous reports have described massacres and indiscriminate killings in Congo. But the latest report's depth will make it harder to ignore, experts say.
The report cost $3 million to produce and details 617 incidents from 1993 to 2003, when a five-year civil war that killed millions through disease and neglect ended. It concludes that tens of thousands of people — mostly women and children — were slain in attacks by the many armed groups roving eastern Congo.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stressed in a statement that the report "is not a judicial investigation" and "does not establish individual criminal responsibility."
The aim of the report "was to encourage efforts to break the cycle of impunity and continuing gross violations, by showing the scale and seriousness of the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law," she said.
Martin Nesirky, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, backed Pillay's statement, saying "it's about helping them to fight impunity and avoid perpetuation of this cycle of violence which we have seen even in the past month."The Congolese government welcomed the report's suggestion that a tribunal be set up to prosecute those responsible.
Congo's ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Ileka Atoki, described the report as "heartbreaking" and "horrific."
"The victims deserve justice," said Atoki. "The Congolese government is firmly committed to that endeavor," he said, proposing an international meeting in Kinshasa to discuss the report.
Amnesty International said the report was "very thorough."
"What we want now is for action to be taken," said Veronique Aubert, the group's deputy Africa director. "The cycle of violence in the region will only stop if those responsible for these horrific crimes are held to account."
The report has reopened old wounds in Africa's Great Lakes region, where massive mineral wealth has fueled conflict even as many people in the region live in dire poverty.

Rwandan and Ugandan officials mounted a sophisticated public relations campaign before the report's release. They distributed detailed attacks on the findings and warned that their governments might pull out of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame dropped that threat just a few days ago. It would have been a major blow to the 22,000-strong U.N.-African Union force in Sudan's Darfur region which is commanded by a Rwandan general and includes more than 3,200 Rwandan troops.
Asked whether the secretary-general had done "a tradeoff" with Rwanda — that the U.N. wouldn't push for judicial steps to follow up the report if the government kept its troops in Darfur and other peacekeeping missions — U.N. spokesman Nesirky replied: "There's no linkage, no quid pro quo. Any follow up would be on its merits."
Mushikiwabo, the Rwandan foreign minister, said the U.N. was trying to "undermine the peace and stability attained in the Great Lakes region." Ugandan foreign ministry spokesman Guma Muganda called the report "fake and malicious." Muganda said Ugandan soldiers were never deployed in areas where they are now accused of crimes.
One incident the report said involved Ugandan troops took place in the night of June 5-6, 1996, in the border village of Bunagana. Rwanda and Ugandan soldiers allegedly killed at least 28 civilians, mostly Rwandan Hutus.
"Tutsis from Bunagana are thought to have been used as scouts, pointing out the houses of people to be killed to the commandos," the report said.
Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said troops never killed anyone at Bunagana.
The first challenge in prosecuting anyone will be proving that crimes on the scale described actually took place, said Louise Doswald-Beck, a law professor at Geneva's Graduate Institute.
"There is a big difference between doing a fact-finding report, where you evaluate the evidence on the balance of probabilities, and convicting someone in a criminal tribunal, when you need to prove that someone is guilty beyond reasonable doubt," she said.
In the end, prosecutors may choose to pursue only accusations of crimes against humanity, which have a lower burden of proof than genocide, an act that must have been planned, said Doswald-Beck.
Rwandan officials warned of consequences.

"This is a report that is capable of destabilizing the whole region and even capable of destabilizing the peace process and reconciliation in Rwanda," said Venetia Sebudandi, the country's Geneva ambassador.
Anneke van Woudenberg, senior Congo researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said prosecutions will depend on the U.N. Security Council and Rwandan cooperation.
"We know that Rwanda plays hardball," she said. "But if they want a lasting peace they are going to have to compromise."



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Human Rights Group Calls For Prosecution of Human Rights Abusers In Congo

A major international Human Rights group has welcomed the release of a United Nations report documenting atrocities, including serious violations of human rights, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the decade between March 1993 and June 2003.

The report raises serious allegations of brutal and horrific mass killings, rape and other abuses during the period in question.
“It’s a powerful reminder of the events and the terrible crimes that took place in the DRC over this ten year period,” said Carina Tertsakian, a Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch.
She said for all these years the perpetrators of these crimes - massacres, rapes, and other abuses against civilians- have not been brought to justice. “We hope the publication of this report will form the basis of concerted international action to begin setting up a process of justice for these crimes.”
Four African nations -- Angola, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda -- have rejected or protested the report, which implicates their armed forces in the alleged crimes.
Tertsakian told VOA from London that she is not surprised by the protestations of these countries. “None of these governments has ever acknowledged or even less admitted that their troops took part in very serious human right abuses at that time.”
She said it is understandable that they should be sensitive to these allegations but added that “a blanket denial of the events and the rejection of the [UN] report is not really helpful.” “Instead of simply denying that these things happened they would do better to take the allegations seriously and cooperate with any international effort to follow up the findings of this report,” said Tertsakian.
The report, she added, merits a serious response from the UN and from its member states and particularly those governments of the Great Lakes region. The UN Security Council, she said, should insist that those states that are implicated in the report assist in efforts to bring about justice.
“We hope this report will act as a trigger for some action. It’s not too late, even though there should have been much stronger international action at the time (the crimes were committed).
Tertsakian said western governments can still prove their will to find solutions to the crisis in the region by acting and putting resources and political will behind the process of justice.
She decried earlier threats by Uganda and Rwanda to pull out their troops from peacekeeping operations if the report was released, and described their threats as blackmail.
Tertsakian urged the governments of Uganda and Rwanda to keep the issue of peacekeepers separate from the findings of the report.

DR Congo demands justice for massacre victims

(AFP) Posted Friday October 1, 2010 - 11:34am

Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday demanded justice for the victims of genocide-style massacres described in a bitterly disputed investigation which has thrown the United Nations into a diplomatic storm.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made no immediate comment on the report, which has caused controversy in Africa among the eight nations implicated in the 1993-2003 carnage. Experts meanwhile highlighted that uncontrolled violence remains rife in DR Congo.
"The victims deserve justice and they deserve that their voices are heard by my government and by the international community," DR Congo's ambassador to the United Nations, Ileka Atoki, said in a statement which backed possible mixed international-Congo courts to try the perpetrators.
Atoki called the accounts of killings of thousands of people "heartbreaking."
He said the Congo government was "appalled at the horrific nature and scope of crimes documented in this report that the people of the Congo have suffered."
"The perpetrators of these crimes are both Congolese and non-Congolese nationals, including those, African or not, who have profited from our mineral resources and helped to drive the war," the ambassador said.
But he added that "in addition to seeking justice for the victims of the terrible crimes, we also seek to improve diplomatic and brotherly relations with all our neighboring countries for a lasting peace."
The UN Human Rights Council report on atrocities carried out in DR Congo between up to 2003 proposes a possible court in DR Congo with national and international judges.
The ambassador said the Congo government would study this and other options.
Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said the UN secretary general has the report but that he would not make an immediate comment. A leaked version of the report forced him to carry out a special mission to Rwanda to assuage the fury of its president who demanded the report be withdrawn.
Rwanda had threatened to withdraw troops from UN peacekeeping missions. Uganda has since made a similar threat. Burundi has also expressed anger at the report. Ban brokered a deal under which all countries named could add their comments to the final version.
With the UN clearly under pressure, Nesirky called it "an awful period of human suffering" but said the intention of the investigation was not about "establishing criminal responsibility."
He said UN legal experts had intensely scrutinized the final report. "It does talk about groups but it does not talk about individuals."
The report "is supposed to be helping the Democratic Republic of Congo overcome the cycle of impunity," Nesirky told a press briefing.
DR Congo is still afflicted by serious ethnic violence with hundreds of women targeted by mass rapes by militias in the mineral-rich east of the country last month.
Reed Brody, who was deputy head of a UN investigation into the killings in the 1990s, said "if ever we are going to break the cycle of violence today, the authors of these past crimes need to be brought to justice."
Brody, who now works for the Human Rights Watch group, said the UN Security Council "buried" the report by his UN team in 1998.
"It was like giving a green light to these armies, militias and rag-tag armed groups to do anything that they wanted in DR Congo."
He added that the rapes last month had been "at least facilitated by the failure to anything about the crimes of yesterday."
John Hirsch, a senior advisor at the International Peace Institute in New York, also said that the report should be used to reinforce efforts to control today's violence in DR Congo.
"I'm not sure how easy it will be to organize now tribunals into these past events," he said.

UN Congo Report Released Amid Protest from Uganda, Rwanda

The United Nations on Friday released a controversial report documenting massive violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The report has sparked protests from both Rwanda and Uganda, whose armed forces are implicated in the crimes. The African countries of Angola and Burundi have also disputed aspects of the report.

On Friday the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released the final version of a report documenting crimes against humanity and human rights violations committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The report documents over 600 major crimes including mass rape, targeted killings of civilians and other crimes against humanity from 1993 to 2003. The report implicates armed forces from Uganda and Rwanda in many of the crimes, suggesting that some may have amounted to genocide.
An initial draft leaked in late August sparked a diplomatic crisis, with Rwanda threatening to pull troops out of peacekeeping operations in the Darfur region of Sudan. While Rwanda has since withdrawn its threats, Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo called the final report "flawed and dangerous" and said it was a "moral and intellectual failure" aimed at "reigniting conflict in Rwanda and the region."
But the United Nations is standing by the report. The Director of Field Operation and Technical Cooperation for the UN Commissioner on Human Rights, Anders Kompass, said the research was held to the highest standard and conducted impartially.
"We have absolutely no interest in fabricating things that are so serious, so sad like the ones that are in this report," said Anders Kompass. "What is important to say is that the report does not make and definitive legal conclusions. What is in this report has then to be brought to a competent court where the evidence is then presented by both sides. What the report does is to provide a preliminary assessment of the facts."
After the initial outcry from Rwanda and Uganda, the United Nations invited the countries mentioned in the report to submit comments, which have been published along with the final version. There were fears the Rwandan threats might compel the U.N. to dilute the report's findings but the final version maintains its initial conclusions, with some changes to the language.
The report refers to many of the attacks as systematic in nature, and suggests they could possibly be characterized as genocide before a court of law.
The report has essentially challenged the narrative of the Rwandan genocide which left over 800,000 dead in 1994. Much of President Paul Kagame's legitimacy has been based on his role in ending those killings. But the report implicates Rwandan forces under Mr. Kagame's command of similar crimes just across the border.
In the wake of the 1994 genocide, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front pursued Hutu forces responsible for the genocide into the Congo. While Rwanda maintains it was pursuing military opponents, the report finds many instances of Hutu civilians being deliberately targeted.
But the Rwandan government says the report is aimed at promoting the theory of "double genocide."
The report also met with fury from the government of Uganda, similarly accused of serious crimes in the report.
Following in Rwandan footsteps, the government issued a statement earlier this week saying the report could undermine its commitment to international peacekeeping operations. Uganda makes up a large portion of peacekeeping troops currently stationed in Somalia and there were fears the report would provoke their withdrawal from the troubled region. But the spokesman of the Uganda People's Defense Force, Felix Kulayigye, told VOA Uganda remained committed to the AMISOM mission in the Horn of African nation.

UNHCHR Finds Evidence of War Crimes, Genocide in Congo War

2 October 2010 :: J.E. Robertson

A new report on the intricacies of regional involvement in the brutal civil war that was fought in the Democratic Republic of Congo, between the late 1990s and early 2000s, whose resulting chaos, factionalism and scarcity, continue to take huge numbers of lives every month, has found that other nations contributed to the hostilities and that some alleged atrocities might constitute war crimes or genocide. Rwanda, Burundi and other nations, say the report is flawed and they were not involved in any such crimes.
The UN reports:
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released Friday a 550-page report listing 617 of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law over a ten-year period by both state and non-state actors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Tens of thousands of people were killed, and numerous others were raped, mutilated or otherwise victimized during the decade. The report also examines in detail various options for truth and reconciliation, as well as for bringing those responsible for serious crimes to justice, thereby ending a climate of near-total impunity and setting the foundation for sustainable peace and development in the DRC.
The report is the product of a “Mapping Exercise” that took more than two years to research and produce, including eight months work on the ground in the DRC by a 33-strong team charged with interviewing witnesses and examining other information from a wide range of sources. Many of the attacks were directed against non-combatant civilian populations consisting primarily of women and children, the report says. Over 1,280 individual witnesses were interviewed to corroborate or invalidate alleged violations, including previously unrecorded incidents, and more than 1,500 documents were collected and analysed.
The government of Rwanda has warned the report could contribute to deterioration in security conditions across the region and warns it could inflame ethnic tensions and lead to calls for vengeance and retribution. Rwanda, in particular, is cited as having supported genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even after the catastrophic genocide inside Rwanda was halted.
The Kagame government has been credited by some with ending the Rwandan genocide, in 1994, and has been praised for efforts to achieve reconciliation and root out the ethnic extremism that led to the killings. There are concerns that if the government is associated with ethnic killing between Hutus and Tutsis in the DRC, the nation could be destabilized.
Rwanda has threatened to pull out of the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur, which has been deployed with the specific mandate to prevent genocide. Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, has flown to Kigali, to do the work of high diplomacy to diffuse tensions relating to the findings of the draft report.
According to Reuters:
“The Burundi government has asked the U.N. Secretary General to take Burundi off the list of countries accused of involvement in killings in D.R Congo from 1993 to 2003,” government spokesman Philippe Nzobonariba, said on State Radio and Television late on Tuesday.
Echoing evidence of what is today alleged to be the most extreme atmosphere of sexual assault and impunity for such crimes, the report finds that “Violence in the DRC was, in fact, accompanied by the apparent systematic use of rape and sexual assault allegedly by all combatant forces”. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the report “also suggests that other countries have a role to play in assisting a transitional justice process in the DRC”.

Congolese march shines light on genocide

Some 30 former citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo now living in Illinois cities walked quietly through downtown Springfield on Friday, Sept. 17, to call attention to the genocide and mass rape happening in their former country.

“Our country is known today as the World Capital of Rape,” Pappy Bakungola of Springfield said. Tens of thousands have been killed in refugee camps and villages, much of the violence instigated by the President Paul Kagame of neighboring Rwanda, according to individuals demonstrating last week. Former Congolese living in Champaign, Bloomington, Beardstown, Chicago and Springfield participated.
Soldiers from the Rwandan Patriotic Front sent by President Kagame into Congo since 1994 have been charged with atrocities in a United Nations report that has been circulating recently. Rwandan forces and Congolese militias targeted Hutu refugees and native Congolese Hutus.
The U.N. report, “Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003,” will be officially released on Oct. 1. It was leaked to the French newspaper Le Monde in August. Most believe that it was leaked so that the word “genocide” was made public, in case the report was later watered down in the final version.
Kagame has called the report “outrageous” and is reportedly pressuring the U.N. to remove the word “genocide” from the report. He is also threatening to withdraw peacekeeping forces from the Sudan as the United Nations begins its fall session.
The Congolese group walked to the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin to encourage him to continue his support for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo and to speak out on how the situation is handled at the United Nations this fall.
Durbin was a cosponsor to Senate Bill 109-456, the “Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security and Democracy Promotion Act,” which was introduced by then-Senator Barack Obama, and signed into law in 2006 by President George W. Bush.
The group also met with representatives from Sen. Roland Burris’s office in Springfield.

“This report is a very, very powerful tool which will bring the truth to the public,” Bakangola said. “It gives specific information of crimes in specific villages. For the first time the international community is bringing to light what we’ve been saying all along.”
The report documents 600 events of murder, torture, and rape in DRC between 1993 and 2003. It was compiled from some 1,000 documents and 1,000 eyewitness accounts. Most of the victims were children, women and elderly and sick people.
“More people have been killed in Congo than in Darfur,” Bakangola said. “We had to stand up and let our voices be heard. We are average people — students and people working in restaurants. The rapes and killings continue today, and people committing these crimes go free.”

No bail for men accused of killing Rwandan general

Published in: Legalbrief Today


Date: Thu 23 September 2010

Category: In Court

Issue No: 2652

Pascal Kanyandekwe, fingered as the brains behind the assassination attempt against a former Rwandan general living in SA, has been denied bail by the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court.
A report in The Star says Kanyandekwe and his co-accused face charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the June shooting of Lieutenant-General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa. The report says in a case that has already seen SA recall its ambassador to Rwanda, evidence placed before the court seems to indicate the men were acting on the instructions of the Rwandan Government. But Kanyandekwe also faces a further charge of conspiracy for allegedly plotting to kill Nyamwasa while he was recovering in hospital. It was for this charge that he and two co-accused were denied bail. After the first failed assassination attempt, Kanyandekwe is alleged to have regrouped with a new set of conspirators. Their supposed plan was to pose as hospital visitors. Once in Nyamwasa's room, they were to strangle him before ditching their suits and escaping in casual wear. But the men were arrested on the way to the hospital after a police tip-off. Magistrate Lukas van der Schyff also denied bail to co-accused Shafiri Bakari and Ahmed Ali. The report notes two other alleged conspirators - Juma Husein and George Francis - abandoned their bail applications earlier in the trial.

Spain asks SAfrica to extradite ex-Rwanda general

(AP) – 1 hour ago

JOHANNESBURG — A justice department spokesman says South Africa has received an extradition request from Spain for a Rwandan general already at the center of tensions between the two African countries.

Spokesman Tlali Tlali said Wednesday that he would not comment on how the South African government would respond to the request or when it was received by the government.
Spain's cabinet on Friday said it was asking South Africa to extradite former army Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa so that he can be tried for genocide and killing Spanish aid workers, charges Rwandan authorities have denied.
Spanish legal doctrine allows Spanish courts to prosecute egregious human rights crimes even if they are alleged to have occurred in other countries, so long as there is a clear link to Spain.

Pictures of People protesting Kagame in Newyork.

The truth about Rwanda conflict

Rwanda Hutu rebels warn UN over Kigali's 'tactics'

By AFP


Posted Tuesday, September 14 2010 at 17:17
NAIROBI, Tuesday

Rwandan Hutu rebels urged the United Nations Tuesday not to succumb to Kigali's threat to withdraw troops from Sudan if the world body publishes a report accusing the country's troops of crimes.

The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels, based in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, called on the UN to purge its peacekeeping missions of forces it claimed were soiling its image.
The group asked the UN "not to surrender to the manoeuvres, tactics of intimidation and other forms of blackmail that Kigali began to practice... by threatening to withdraw its troops from the UN peacekeeping missions.
"Rather, it's now or never for the UN to get rid of soldiers that, with hands stained with innocent blood, bring disgrace upon an institution whose mission is to maintain peace in the world," the FDLR said in a statement.
A draft version of a UN human rights report on the DR Congo accused Rwandan troops of genocide-style massacres in the country in 1996-97.
Infuriated Kigali threatened to pull out its 3,500 troops serving in a UN peacekeeping mission in the Sudan, prompting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to travel to Kigali last week for talks with President Paul Kagame.
"The FDLR urge the international community and particularly the UN... to ensure that no one, without exception, of those who have participated in the genocide of Rwandan and Congolese Hutu escape justice," added the text.
Some FLDR elements have themselves been accused by Kigali of participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide by Hutu extremists in which some 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, were killed

New allegations against Rwanda president

MBANDAKA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sept 10 GNE - Mbandaka is a town on the southern bank of the Congo River. Inaccessible, hidden, lost deep inside the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is far from its neighbour Rwanda.
Yet according to a draft United Nations report, seen by the GlobalPost news service, it was there, almost 2000 kilometres from their home, that Rwandan soldiers and their allies killed hundreds of refugees on May 13, 1997.
According to the leaked report compiled by a team of researchers from the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rwandan troops "opened fire on refugees at the port for five to 10 minutes, killing an unknown number".
"The commanding officer then ordered the soldiers to stop firing and told the refugees to leave their hideouts," the report continues.

"Some jumped into the Zaire (now Congo) River, hoping to escape. The soldiers then took up position along the river and opened fire. Around two o'clock in the afternoon, the soldiers began to sort the refugees, then clubbed them to death."
Accusations of atrocities have been levelled before at Rwandan rebel-turned-president Paul Kagame's forces, but never in such detail and never by an organisation carrying the authority of the UN.
The researchers spent seven months examining a decade of violence between 1993 and 2003 across the entire country.
To conduct the "mapping exercise", they consulted more than 1500 documents and interviewed more than 1280 witnesses insisting on double sourcing of all allegations.
Of the 617 incidents included in the 500-page draft, 104 are attributed to Kagame's troops and their allies.
Kagame's forces invaded Congo in 1996 to hunt down the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide two years earlier in which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu extremists.
The invasion triggered a violent years-long maelstrom that drew in six more countries and led to the deaths of millions, mostly because of resulting sickness and disease.
Observers have dubbed the conflict "Africa's World War".
While every side involved in the fighting is accused of killing civilians, it is the Rwandans who come off worst.
The UN report says Rwanda and its allies made "no effort" to distinguish between civilians and combatants, between innocent and guilty, in the "relentless" pursuit of Hutus across Congo's vast territory.
"Probably several tens of thousands" were killed, the report says.
In numerous examples, Hutus were rounded up under some pretext or another - perhaps to be registered for a return to Rwanda, or to be given food - only to be shot, hacked or clubbed to death and flung into mass graves, hundreds at a time.
"The numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage," the report says.
"The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces."
Most controversially, the report states that if proven in a court of law some of the incidents "could be classified as crimes of genocide".
The Rwandan government is outraged over the report, especially because Kagame's moral authority rests on his reputation as the man who stopped the Rwandan genocide.
The report is "immoral and unacceptable", according to Kagame's spokesman, Ben Rutsinga.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon written before the leak, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping soldiers from the joint UN and African Union mission in Darfur if the report was published in its current form.
"It is patently absurd for the UN, which deliberately turned its back on the Rwandan people during the 1994 genocide, to accuse the army that stopped the genocide of committing atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo," Ms Mushikiwabo wrote in the letter obtained by GlobalPost.
Following Rwanda's outcry, publication of the report had been delayed until next month.
"We have decided to give concerned states a further month to comment on the draft and I have offered to publish any such comments alongside the report itself on 1 October," said Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva.
Sources say the "genocide" allegations are expected to remain in the final report, and although the Rwandan government will have its right to reply the damage might already have been done.
Recent presidential elections in Rwanda were widely criticised for the stifling of dissent, banning of newspapers and political parties, and mysterious murders that preceded the polls.
Kagame went on to win a landslide victory but his reputation took a knock. The leaked UN report is a still deeper scratch in Kagame's carefully burnished image.
© 2010 AAP

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Rwanda needs deeper reforms

In a signed paper emailed to Sunday Monitor, co-authors Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, Col. Patrick Karegeya, Dr Theogene Rudasingwa and Gerald Gahima say progress in Rwanda needs to be buttressed by deeper democratic reforms. Excerpts.

In 1994, Rwanda suffered a tragedy that left over one million of its citizens dead as a result of war and genocide. The war and genocide resulted in immense suffering to millions more. The war and genocide have had far-reaching repercussions for both Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa as a whole.



Rwanda’s recovery from the ravages of war and genocide is generally regarded as a rare success story in post-conflict reconstruction. Visitors to the country are impressed by its economic growth, security situation and cleanliness, as well as the orderliness of its people and the efficiency with which its institutions conduct business. To its passionate friends, Rwanda is a shining example of democratisation, reformation, and an effective and efficient government.

Supporters of the Rwandan government largely attribute Rwanda’s success in post-war reconstruction to President Paul Kagame. The rebel general-turned-civilian politician cultivates a cult-image as the sole hero of the country’s achievements. President Kagame is perceived by most outsiders as both invincible and indispensable to national and regional stability.




RPF achievements

The Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) has registered many achievements since 1994. Its army is generally credited with having stopped the genocide, although there are genocide survivors who do not share this view. Its government re-established law and order, restored essential social services, repatriated and resettled millions of refugees and internally displaced persons, and established effective state institutions, that have rescued Rwanda from the brink of becoming a failed state.



The government has, with the often grudgingly acknowledged assistance of the international community, helped to spur economic recovery. President Kagame rightly deserves his share of credit for Rwanda’s progress in reconstruction after the war and genocide.



There is, however, more to Rwanda and Kagame than new buildings, clean streets, and efficient. Rwanda is essentially a hard-line, one-party, secretive police state with a façade of democracy. The ruling RPF has closed space for political participation. The RPF does not tolerate political opposition or open competition for power.
The government ensures its monopoly of power by means of draconian restrictions on the exercise of the fundamental human rights of citizens. The press, civil society and opposition parties are deprived of freedom to operate freely. President Kagame and the ruling party that he leads depend on repression to stay in power.




Rwanda has failed to transition to good governance and democracy. The RPF manipulated the transition process to entrench its monopoly of political and economic power. Rwanda is a one-party authoritarian state, controlled by President Kagame through a small clique of Tutsi military officers and civilian cadres of the RPF from behind the scenes.



Hutus excluded

The majority Hutu community remains excluded from a meaningful share of political power. State institutions are as effective as they are repressive. The government relies on severe repression to maintain its hold on power.



The situation that prevails raises serious questions about the country’s future. Are the country’s development achievements sustainable? Can Rwanda continue to be peaceful while the government continues to be repressive and many people consider the government illegitimate? How do we balance individual freedoms and the requirement for a stable community? How should citizens respond when rulers mistake the state to be their personal estate and deprive their subjects of their inalienable rights?



More questions

Should they resist peacefully or take up arms? If armed conflict is ill-advised, given its potential to cause human suffering, how else then can citizens reclaim their rights to hold the government accountable?

What strategies would help Rwanda avoid violent conflict that appears inevitable and to set it on the path towards peaceful resolution of the problems that drive conflict in Rwandan society?
The state of governance in Rwanda cannot be discussed in isolation from the character of the RPF and the quality of its leadership because of the very dominant role that the RPF in general and President Kagame have played in the politics of post-genocide Rwanda. The RPF assumed control of government at the end of the genocide and civil war because it was the only opposition group with the military capacity to take on the organisers and perpetuators of the genocide.




At the end of the genocide, the RPF briefly cohabited in a coalition government with other organisations that had opposed the Habyarimana dictatorship. Since late 1995, the RPF has progressively assumed exclusive control of the state.



The RPF was originally established as a people’s movement whose goal was to bring together under one umbrella, individuals and groups of different political backgrounds and ideological beliefs that shared a minimum political platform to promote democracy in Rwanda. From its founding in 1979 as the Rwandese Alliance for National Union (RANU) to its capture of state power in 1994, the RPF professed a commitment to the vision of a free, democratic order under an accountable government.



The RPF is no longer the democratic, inclusive and principled organisation that its founders and early leaders and members intended it to be. The organisation has now become a caricature of its former self.

The party, like the rest of the country, is engulfed by fear, held hostage to President Kagame’s arbitrary and repressive rule.



The prime objective of the struggle of the RPF, as well other groups that rose up during the late 1980s and early 1990s to take on the challenge of opposing the Habyarimana dictatorship, was to establish democracy in Rwanda. The RPF’s management of the affairs of Rwanda since the genocide and civil war has led to reversing, rather than consolidating, the gains that the struggle for democracy had achieved prior to the genocide.

In practice, the RPF has progressively reduced the space for other political forces to operate in the country. The 1995 ousting of Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu and other critical ministers started a trend towards progressive consolidation of the RPF’s monopolistic control of the machinery of the state. The RPF has, since then, striven for unrivalled political supremacy in Rwanda.
It has achieved this political supremacy not through an open and free process of competition with other political forces, but through repressive laws, administrative practices and the use of the security services to frustrate the exercise of the civil and political rights of opponents. Not only is the opposition excluded from participating in government; it is effectively barred from undertaking any activities inside the country at all. The RPF enjoys unchallenged power in Rwanda. Rwanda is far less free now than it was prior to the genocide. The political system of the Rwandan state lacks mechanisms of checks and balances that are essential for good governance and genuine democracy. The President has absolute control over the executive branch of government. The Executive, in turn, completely dominates other organs of government.




Re-defining sectarianism

The government passed legislation to punish sectarianism and discrimination. The government has, since 2003, used accusations of “sectarianism,” “divisionism,” and “spreading of genocide ideology” to curtail political opposition and civil society work, most specifically human rights work. These crimes are not properly defined in the relevant legislation.



The politics of ethnicity remain intractable in Rwanda. The majority of the Hutu middle-class that was ousted from power in 1994 remains in exile, un-reconciled to the new political order, biding time and hoping for a regime change. Some armed insurgents continue to wage war against the Rwandan state from their sanctuaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sixteen years after the genocide.

The externally-based unarmed opposition calls for dialogue on how to resolve the country’s continuing crisis, but the government says that the conflict has been resolved and there is no need for negotiation of a settlement.




Reconciliation wanting

There cannot be genuine reconciliation in Rwanda until the grievances of the Hutu community over the issues of political participation, as well as the guarantees for the minorities, equal citizenship before the law, access to resources and accountability for human rights abuses are addressed.



The hopes for a democratic, peaceful and stable Rwanda that the overthrow of the rump government that carried out the genocide once inspired have dissipated. The issues that have previously driven conflict in Rwanda remain unresolved. Rwanda is, by many accounts, again in grave risk of very violent conflict.



Such conflict is not inevitable, but neither is it easily avoidable. Whether Rwanda will again have to endure atrocious conflict or find a way to overcome the forces responsible for intractable conflict and transition to a peaceful, stable democracy will depend on the policies and actions of many players, including President Kagame himself, Rwandan society at large and, indeed, the international community.



We offer the following reflections on some of the steps that may need to be taken to avert a new catastrophe and set Rwanda on a path towards security, peace, democracy, genuine reconciliation, national healing, and sustainable development.



Promoting freedom as the foundation on which to build peace and shared prosperity for all Rwandans; Undertaking a genuine, inclusive, unconditional and comprehensive National dialogue on the nature and causes of the country’s major problems, and on a compact on the future of the country; Establishing a New National Partnership Government to lead Rwanda through the transition to democracy; and Engaging the international community including, in particular, Rwanda’s neighbours, to support Rwanda’s reform agenda.

Looming crisis


The people of Rwanda, together with rest of the international community, have a moral duty to work to end this repressive system of government. Rwanda is literally again on the brink of an abyss.



The complicity of collusion and silence that contributed to making the 1994 genocide possible ought not to be repeated. The manner in which the international community has engaged the government of Rwanda to date clearly indicates that the lessons that ought to have been drawn from the 1994 genocide have not been learnt.



The next priority is to ensure that Rwanda changes its laws on political participation.

U.N. report on Congo genocide strengthened

A draft U.N. report accusing the Rwandan army of massacring Hutus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1990s is corroborated by findings of an international human rights group.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) postponed the release of the report on Thursday after leaked sections of the document prompted angry protests from Rwanda.

The draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, notes the "devastating consequences of the Rwandan genocide on the declining Zairian state" between March 1993 and June 1996. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was known as Zaire at the time.
It accuses Rwanda's Tutsi-led army of killing tens of thousands of Hutus, including women, children and the elderly.
The period July 1996 to July 1998 was marked by the "relentless pursuit and mass killing" of Hutu refugees by members of the former Armed Forces of Rwanda and affiliated militias, the draft report says.

The report covers a period from March of 1993 to June of 2003.
"The period covered by this report is probably one of the most tragic chapters in the recent history of the DRC. Indeed, this decade was marked by a string of major political crises, wars and multiple ethnic and regional conflicts that brought about the deaths of thousands, if not millions, of people. Very few Congolese and foreign civilians living on the territory of the DRC managed to escape the violence, and were victims of murder, mutilation, rape, forced displacement, pillage, destruction of property or economic and social rights violations," the draft report says.
Rwandan officials say their troops entered the former Zaire in pursuit of Hutu militias responsible for the massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

The international watchdog Human Rights Watch extensively documented abuses that took place in former Zaire in the late 1990s.
The group's researchers are familiar with most of the incidents document in the draft report, said Rona Peligal, acting director of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. "But even they are still shocked and horrified by the extent of the abuses perpetrated against the Congolese people, particularly by the Rwandan army and its Congolese allies," she added.
"This is a very uncomfortable issue for the Rwandans because the report is quite a damning investigation of abuses committed in part by Rwandans and their Congolese allies," Ms. Peligal said in a phone interview on Friday.




Rwanda has threatened to pull its troops out of U.N. peacekeeping missions in protest.



U.N. High Commissioner for Human RightsNavi Pillay said on Thursday that she had postponed publication of the report to Oct. 1.



"Following requests, we have decided to give concerned states a further month to comment on the draft and I have offered to publish any comments alongside the report itself on 1 October, if they so wish," Ms. Pillay said in a statement.



The U.N. has been under political pressure not to undertake this report.



"We had heard that the Rwandans were very much trying to dilute the report and prevent its publication and the fact that it has taken this long to publish is a testament to that," Ms. Peligal said.



She said she initially had concerns that the report would be watered down, but added, "we believe that the delay will make possible the full publication of the report with Rwanda's comments."

Ms. Peligal said she was somewhat disappointed by the delay.

"But we also look forward to the report being published in full. That is the most important thing. And that proper action is taken on the report's recommendation," she added.

The report results from interviews and meetings with several hundred Congolese men and women.

"[N]o report could adequately describe the horrors experienced by civilian populations in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo," Ms. Pillay says in an introduction to the draft report. "Every individual has at least one story to tell of suffering and loss."

Rwandan hutus refeeges killed in congo.

U.N. says Rwandan troops carried out mass killings in '90s

The release of the report is a political blow to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. (Margaret Cappa)

By Colum Lynch


Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 29, 2010



An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide, according to a confidential copy of the report.
The report - which is 545 pages and details crimes committed in Congo from March 1993 to June 2003 - represents the harshest United Nations account to date of the conduct of the ethnic Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government, which has largely been credited with liberating the country from the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Its release represents a political blow to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who was reelected this month in a landslide victory that was marred by allegations of political repression against political opponents. His government denounced the U.N. findings as "immoral and unacceptable," and Rwanda has sought to block the report's release, according to U.N. sources.
The inquiry, which was conducted by a team from the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, alleges that Rwanda and its military allies carried out systematic waves of well-planned, highly organized reprisal killings against Hutu refugees in the years after they fled across the border into eastern Zaire, now known as Congo, along with remnants of the former Rwandan military. It also notes that Rwanda's ethnic Tutsi allies in eastern Congo were the target of mass killings and persecution.
The report documents more than 600 incidents of large-scale killings in Congo, which it claims constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. It notes that the "systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of damning elements that, if proven, could be classified as crimes of genocide."
"The period covered by this report is probably one of the most tragic in the recent history" of Congo, the report stated. "Indeed, this decade was marked by a string of major political crises, wars and multiple ethnic and regional conflicts that brought about the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people."

The Rwandan government issued a statement Thursday challenging the findings, asserting that the U.N. investigators employed a "questionable methodology, sourcing and shockingly low standard of proof" in reaching their conclusions.

"The report is a dangerous and irresponsible document that under the guise of human rights can only achieve instability in the Great Lakes [of Africa] region and undermine ongoing efforts to stabilize the region," the Rwandan statement said. The Great Lakes region encompasses Burundi, Congo, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda.

Rwanda's foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, warned U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a recent letter that her government would withdraw from U.N. peacekeeping missions, including the U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur.

The U.N. findings were reported Wednesday by the French daily Le Monde and in the New York Times on Saturday.

Rwanda's former Hutu-dominated government, backed by ethnic Hutu militias, killed more than 800,000 Rwandans, primarily ethnic Tutsis, during the 1994 genocide. A Rwandan rebel movement, headed by Kagame, seized control of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. Many of those responsible for the mass killings, along with hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians, fled across the border into eastern Zaire, where they continued to mount raids against the new Rwandan government.
Kagame is credited with having transformed Rwanda into a dynamic economic upstart and with providing women with unprecedented rights to pursue entrepreneurial and political endeavors. But his government has been dogged by allegations, stemming from the years following the genocide, that his own forces engaged in massive human rights abuses, though on a far smaller scale than the government it ousted.

Kagame maintains that his country's army has engaged in military operations in eastern Congo targeted solely at combatants responsible for perpetrating genocide in Rwanda and for subsequently mounting attacks against the country from bases inside Congo. The report acknowledges that Kagame's government continued to face armed attacks from Rwandan rebels in Congo, and that it welcomed back a massive number of Hutu refugees to Rwanda - a gesture, the report noted, that may complicate efforts to prosecute government officials for engaging in genocide.




But the report includes evidence that Rwanda and its allies may have targeted and killed tens of thousands of civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The report focuses on the activities of a nascent rebel movement - the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (known by its French initials AFDL) - that was set up in October 1996 and headed by Laurent Desire Kabila. The group received arms, training and logistical support from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. While the group's stated goal was the overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, its activities were "characterized by the relentless pursuit of Hutu refugees" and Rwandan rebels, the report said.



The report cites numerous accounts of Rwandan army forces and members of the AFDL mounting attacks on scores of Rwandan refugee camps, often luring their victims by promising to repatriate them safely to their homes. On Oct. 20, Rwandan and Burundian army troops, backed by the AFDL, "carried out widespread and systematic attacks on eleven camps. They killed about 370 refugees the following day at the Luberizi refugee camp, dumping the victims into the latrines. Later that month, the troops killed around 220 male refugees outside a nearby Pentecostal church.
"The soldiers separated the men from the rest of the group and . . . killed them with bayonets. The bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves near the church," the report said.
The U.N. first decided to set up a team to investigate human rights violations in eastern Congo in 1997, but the plan never materialized, according to the report. The U.N. revisited the issue in 2005, after U.N. peacekeepers uncovered three mass graves in North Kivu, a province in eastern Congo. In response, the U.N. decided to establish a "mapping exercise of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law" in eastern Congo between July 1993 and June 2003, and advise Congo on how to ensure some form of justice for the crimes. U.N. investigators began their work in July 2008 with the goal of amassing a large sample of cases that could expose the extent and nature of violence that occurred in Congo. The authors - who reviewed more than 1,500 documents and interviewed 1,280 witnesses - cautioned that they were not trying to establish "individual criminal responsibility, but to expose the seriousness of the violations committed."




Navanethem Pillay, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, would maintain a confidential database of alleged war criminals that could be used in the event that a court is set up to prosecute them, the report said.

The release of the report is a political blow to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. (Margaret Cappa)

Rwanda: UN Report on Genocide Against Hutu Gives Hope for Genuine Reconciliation

By Nkunda Rwanda
The Cry For Freedom
August 28, 2010


Most of us have a past life we never wish to remember. For some, it could be an incident of embarrassment or a scene from the teenage years when we struggled to fit in. But to many genocide survivors, these would-rather-be-forgotten incidences are truly horrific, as they include images of mass murder and rapes mixed with the desperate, all too human, struggle to survive. Overcome by a thirst for healing, amnesia is often the only option for the victims trying to lay haunting pasts to rest.

Towards the end of 1996, the Rwandan Patriotic Army having gained credit for putting an end to the Rwandan Genocide invaded the Congo (then known as Zaire). It would soon become apparent though that the new Rwandan army was on a killing spree, targeting mostly Hutu civilians.

When under scrutiny, the new Rwandan government (GOR) defended its mission always citing the difficult nature of the operation. They (GOR) said it had been difficult to distinguish civilians from the EX-FAR and Interahamwe. Indeed, this school of thought prevailed for the last decade and outside of academic circles, remained unchallenged. However, one striking question remained unanswered: “why were Hutu-Congolese murdered?” to this day, the government of Rwanda has been unable to provide a convincing response.

The first serious inquiry was blocked by the war lord turned into president, Laurent Kabila. However, after he fell out with Rwanda, he would later remark “I never understood how people (Tutsi soldiers) having suffered Genocide would kill like this”.

That Congolese-Hutu were targeted is not the only evidence for Genocide. Excerpts from the “leaked report” reveal how children and women were deliberately targeted. Accused of no other crime but for being Hutu. Consider this chilling report by US journalist French Howard writing for the New York Times in September 1997:

In Loukolela, the Hutu survivors who have gathered across the Congo River from the former Zaire, 200 miles northeast of Kinshasa, say they know little about the conflict that pits the United Nations against Mr. Kabila's Government.

What they do have, however, are consistent accounts of the murderous attacks that they suffered in the Mbandaka area, as well as at several other stops during their westward trek of more than 1,000 miles across the country.

Mrs. Mporayonzi remembers wandering the woods after the attack had subsided, and said she was taken in by a Zairian family to whom she owes her survival. They told her that she looked enough like the local people to pass undetected, gave her a white bandanna to wear, in the fashion townspeople had adopted as a sign of support for Mr. Kabila, and urged her not to talk to people.

The next day, while she stood in front of the house where she had taken refuge, Mrs. Mporayonzi said a truckload of solders drove by and then stopped. She had feared they were looking for her, but instead they grabbed a Hutu boy on the street.

She said they yelled, ''Here is another son of Habyarimana,'' referring Juvenal Habyarimana, the Hutu former President of Rwanda. ''Right there in the road the soldiers swung the boy by his feet and beat his head against a tree trunk until he was dead.''

Mrs. Mporayonzi said she turned away in horror but had to bite her hand to keep from screaming for fear of giving herself away.

And from the “The Guardian”:

A soldier brought an eight-month-old (Hutu) baby so we could bury him," said a Red Cross worker. But we said, "We can't bury someone living". He took a stick and he hit the child on the head until he was dead.
Important to note is that some of the killing happened as far as Mbandaka which is approximately 758 miles from the eastern border of Congo where the refugees initially camped. The exhausted and hungry refugees having walked all these many miles were finally captured by the Rwandan forces and slaughtered, their bodies dumped into river Congo. This was witnessed and reported by international humanitarian organizations as well as Congolese communal groups.

While killings close to the Rwandan border could perhaps be justified, it is especially difficult to understand why the Rwanda forces would kill civilians on the opposite end of the country (Zaire). Also, by this time, Kabila forces had triumphed marking an end to the civil war. The killings do point to a deliberate and cruel attempt at extermination.

Also, in some noted cases, Congolese civilians were forced to participate in the massacres and were rewarded with cash.

However in certain instances, only males were targeted, while women would be allowed to repatriate to Rwanda. Here is an account from Professor Boyer:

They [Tutsi soldiers] separated the little boys from the girls...And they started killing the boys. First they shot them, and then they cut them in half. So that...if they came back to life they wouldn't be able to escape.

Of course this is just but the beginning of another difficult battle. Although the “leaked report” is a major victory for us as survivors, the struggle is far from over. There needs to be a mechanism to prevent “retributive genocide” from taking place. Counter-Genocide needs to be acknowledged (just like Genocide denial) as another step of Genocide. This will help not only Rwanda but many conflict ridden nations around the world.

Equally important is that the report can be instrumental in fostering genuine reconciliation in Rwanda. One of the key challenges of present Rwanda is that western analysts are stuck in the “bad guys vs. good guys” mentality. They forget that the majority of Hutu, Tutsi and Twa are good people trying to overcome extremely difficult realities. The notion becomes a stumbling block as the present regime is given a green light (Genocide credit) to repress its Hutu citizens who are considered Genocide perpetrators. This has provided huge political capital for former rebel Paul Kagame—and the recent elections is just but another confirmation.

My genuine hope is that Rwandans will find this report as an opportunity for reflection that in would be transformed into action. The government reaction towards the report though predictable is very unfortunate. Simply attacking the researchers and methodology used will not do away these crimes. Threatening to pull out peace-keepers if the report is released will only prove your guilt.It would be more beneficial to respond to the specific allegations--and tell your side of the story.

For once, as Rwandans, let's not squander another opportunity for national healing.